Battlefront 2 - What's the DICE method of thinking?

So I hopped into the Battlefront 2 beta today, hoping that I'd be pleasantly surprised and that the aspects that I liked about the first one (hipfire for days, slow TTK, quick movement, stellar graphics) were expanded upon.

while the TTK seems slightly more inconsistent, hipfire *feels* way less worth it (especially in 3rd Person) and the graphics don't seem to have changed one bit, at least not for the better (Ultra on most, AO on medium).

What's worse is that from what I can tell they took the community's criticisms (grenade/gadget spam, Hero/Vehicle/turret powerups) and made those even more prevalent. While I am under the impression that the heroes are substantially less sturdy than in BaFro1 they are still pretty much invoncible without the help of a hero or several powerup classes to counter them.

I know, I know, it's by design, but isn't it "broken by design"?

BF4 was criticized quite a lot for the inclusion of the M82A3 and USAS powerweapon pickups as well as gadget/grenade spam, and at least in my filterbubble no one ever really defended those.
Battlefield 1 was criticized for its inclusion of powerup classes, bayonet charge, grenade/gadget spam (especially in combination with the otherwise long ttk) and still they decided to double down in their next title.

I don't get DICE's logic. Am I not seeing something?

P.S. Oh yeah, and what's with the bloody reticule? It has even less correlation with the weapon's actual spread than in vanilla BF4 and BF1... On the A280 sniper for example it blooms *massively* while retaining pinpoint accuracy regardless of output... Why give the player blatantly wrong feedback?

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Of course, this ignores the non-constant cross-sectional first moment of area across the chest as well as non-constant material properties of the boob; it would be difficult to perform a more detailed analysis (as in, I'd have to have a shape function AND I'd need to derive a function for elastic modulus as a function of lateral breast coordinate) but whatever. It's 2am and I'm lazy.

You should also answer this question I had posed in that thread: Would you be willing to pay your surgeon more if he was going to use a chainsaw for the opening incision of surgery? Clearly using a chainsaw isn't truly suited for surgery but that doesn't really matter. If he's "skilled" enough to be able to use the wrong tools of the trade, he should be rewarded for that skill right?

People whining on forums are simply not representative of a game's playerbase. DICE makes decisions based on action gameplay statistics that can show how people really play and what maps and weapons are actually popular.

Yeah, forum posters probably comprise < or = 5% of a game's total playerbase. If that.

For example, BF1 has an active playerbase of roughly 125,000. The CTE sub on Reddit has nearly 8,000 members of which only about 100 or so of those 8,000 are active. So the CTE sub, one of the forums that devs are most active on, gets 0.08%, give or take, of the total playerbase.

Even through being generous and saying that 1,000 of the 8,000 actively post or give insight, that's still just 0.8%.

Prepare your laughbox

the Sebstalder is quiet good since it can 3hit kill at any distanc ,but In my opinion i actually thikn the sweeper is better, its got a really really fast firerate that can beat alll those Noobmaticos, Helregall adn shitguns in close quarters , and its also really accurate out to like l;ong range,. overall great allround gun, jsut my 2$ tho

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Of course, this ignores the non-constant cross-sectional first moment of area across the chest as well as non-constant material properties of the boob; it would be difficult to perform a more detailed analysis (as in, I'd have to have a shape function AND I'd need to derive a function for elastic modulus as a function of lateral breast coordinate) but whatever. It's 2am and I'm lazy.

You should also answer this question I had posed in that thread: Would you be willing to pay your surgeon more if he was going to use a chainsaw for the opening incision of surgery? Clearly using a chainsaw isn't truly suited for surgery but that doesn't really matter. If he's "skilled" enough to be able to use the wrong tools of the trade, he should be rewarded for that skill right?

I want to point out what the Battlefront series has been for EA, and likely why it exists at all. Cash grab. Nobody should download this and expect it to perform like Battlefield, in terms of balance or features, and frankly thinking as much would be foolish considering that it's much more focused on the atmosphere of the game than the actual gameplay. Not every FPS game is going to be up to the standards we've come to expect from Battlefield, not even its biggest competitors like Call of Duty. Expecting two Titanfall-style miracle games in a row was a lot to ask, and if SWBF2 isn't a massive improvement over the first one, I won't be surprised. People will buy it because of rose-tinted glasses, and EA will make their money and release another new FPS game next year. I really want the Battlefront series to be good, SWBF2 on the PS2 was my favorite game of all time, but even that is nostalgia speaking a bit. It's probably best to accept it for what it is and move on.

I may end up buying it for the singleplayer campaign if that's any good (i.e. getting enough praise from of the critics I put stock in). That and some initial multiplayer fun made Titanfall 2 very much worth my money. I don't want every FPS with multiplayer to have BF3/4's staying power, if it's good for a couple dozen hours of fun on top of a good campaign it's fine with me, and I do so dearly hope they don't mess up the "you're on the side of the Empire after the second Death Star and the Emperor were lost" story.

Memorable quotes not taken yet:

Of course, this ignores the non-constant cross-sectional first moment of area across the chest as well as non-constant material properties of the boob; it would be difficult to perform a more detailed analysis (as in, I'd have to have a shape function AND I'd need to derive a function for elastic modulus as a function of lateral breast coordinate) but whatever. It's 2am and I'm lazy.

You should also answer this question I had posed in that thread: Would you be willing to pay your surgeon more if he was going to use a chainsaw for the opening incision of surgery? Clearly using a chainsaw isn't truly suited for surgery but that doesn't really matter. If he's "skilled" enough to be able to use the wrong tools of the trade, he should be rewarded for that skill right?

I want to point out what the Battlefront series has been for EA, and likely why it exists at all. Cash grab. Nobody should download this and expect it to perform like Battlefield, in terms of balance or features, and frankly thinking as much would be foolish considering that it's much more focused on the atmosphere of the game than the actual gameplay. Not every FPS game is going to be up to the standards we've come to expect from Battlefield, not even its biggest competitors like Call of Duty. Expecting two Titanfall-style miracle games in a row was a lot to ask, and if SWBF2 isn't a massive improvement over the first one, I won't be surprised. People will buy it because of rose-tinted glasses, and EA will make their money and release another new FPS game next year. I really want the Battlefront series to be good, SWBF2 on the PS2 was my favorite game of all time, but even that is nostalgia speaking a bit. It's probably best to accept it for what it is and move on.

Considering how good the original Battlefront 2 was as a game, this is pretty disgusting (it was a very fun game, even accounting for nostalgia). It was a stellar PC game as well, and now has MP support once again on Steam.

There is really no reason they couldn't bring quality large player count FPS to the Star Wars universe other than shitty business models.

I get the impression that franchised games are basically destined to fail as games due to these toxic business models. A good 40K set game, or a good SW game seem exceptions to the norm for eg.

Considering how good the original Battlefront 2 was as a game, this is pretty disgusting

There are multiple reasons why you shouldn't compare the two.

1. SWBF2 (2005) wasn't developed by DICE or published by EA, it was from Pandemic games and published directly through LucasArts, it's likely that none of the same people worked on the two games.

2. The last Battlefront 2 came out in 2005, that's 12 years ago. You can take any game from 2005 and line it up next to a new game and claim all sorts of things about which one was better, but you need to account for nostalgia with the old games, and the playerbase of the new game. As much as I loved the 2005 version, it isn't quite 'The Greatest Game Ever' as I remember it. On the flip side of that, the 2017 version, and new Battlefield games for that matter, are made the way they are because they sell to the masses. Less depth makes for a more accessible game. Complexity is a barrier to entry, it is also a hallmark of Battlefield. EA intends to sell Battlefront 2 to as many people as possible who are Star Wars fans, they are not counting on a loyal playerbase to make the game successful. That means relatively simple gameplay, and more eyecatching game mechanics over longevity and balance. Buying the game is more important to EA than whether people continue to play it. This is a trend that you will continue to see so long as most of the people buying new games are buying into the hype attached to them, rather than the game itself.

I can think of three great examples that have worked exactly like this recently: For Honor, Fortnite, and Destiny 2. All of them massively hyped, but also shed a majority of their playerbases within the first weeks of launch. New games are a lot like shovelware, you get them out the door to capitalize on hype and make your money up front, if people buy your season pass that's a bonus. It is in the best interest of game publishers to reduce the need for places like Symthic, because we symbolize a barrier of entry that possibly denies them sales. If someone has the urge to look for a third party to learn more about their game, the game is too difficult and not reaching its maximum potential audience. This is not a single disappointing game, this is a paradigm shift that you will continue to see until it stops working, prepare for more disappointment in the future.

I ponder how much of "data-driven design" they do in DICE/EA/big companies, and how effective it is really. Nowadays there seems to be quite a bit of "data science" positions where people gather data and try to infer usable information out from it.

There has been pictures and piece of info that they gather all kinds of telemetry (e.g. the locations of deaths in BF1 campaign), but how exactly this can be improved the game on average still requires good designers, I would imagine.

Maybe this is partly the reason of slow increments in big games? Data/statistics show it works, and they only adjust small portions of it, possibly selling more of the game on average while game itself seeming duller.

I would imagine companies would much rather do these small-but-certain increments instead of moonshots which could lead to revolutionize the scene. Sadly, the latter is something some of us customers would really like.

Links to users' thread list who have made analytical/statistical/mathematical/cool posts on Symthic:

3VerstsNorth - Analysis of game mechanics in BF4 (tickrates, effects of tickrate, etc)

After loving the Starfighter mode for a while I found another huge bugbear with the infantry part: the resurgence of the "Endor" problem. The regular, stalk-like sand colored robots are incredibly hard to see in front of some of the busier walls in Theed, while the white clone troopers stick out quite nicely. I literally couldn't pick out that droid at 10m just now. (ultra, 1080p, 125% res scale)

Also kinda ironic that the store interface has been broken since last night (EU, probably crashed when US evening came) now. That's literally the part EA care most about.

Memorable quotes not taken yet:

Of course, this ignores the non-constant cross-sectional first moment of area across the chest as well as non-constant material properties of the boob; it would be difficult to perform a more detailed analysis (as in, I'd have to have a shape function AND I'd need to derive a function for elastic modulus as a function of lateral breast coordinate) but whatever. It's 2am and I'm lazy.

You should also answer this question I had posed in that thread: Would you be willing to pay your surgeon more if he was going to use a chainsaw for the opening incision of surgery? Clearly using a chainsaw isn't truly suited for surgery but that doesn't really matter. If he's "skilled" enough to be able to use the wrong tools of the trade, he should be rewarded for that skill right?

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Zormau" (Oct 7th 2017, 9:23pm)